When snow or ice melt, they are replaced by darker melt-water pools, land or sea.

ECONOMIST: Global warming

NASA's scientists have designed a device that would be carefully sterilised, and would then melt its way down through the ice, allowing the melt-water to freeze behind it to prevent contamination.

ECONOMIST: Planetary pretenders

Combined with warmer summer temperatures, this creates a net loss for the glacier, even if, in the short-term, the extra melt water is welcome in adjacent lowland areas.

UNESCO: 83e

Jasper town is nestled in the middle of the national park, where icy glaciers tumble down towering rocky peaks and melt to form wild, white water-choked rivers that cut through pine-filled valleys.

BBC: The natural wonders of Banff and Jasper National Parks

Equatorial glaciers will melt and river-flows fall, even as demand for water rises.

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For we rather like being able to drive places, cook food, heat water and survive a Mid-West winter without having to melt the ice on the pitcher each morning.

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"But, ' adds Mel Reasoner, Director of the Mountain Research Initiative, "in many arid and semi-arid areas, people are dependent not only on the amount of glacier melt water, but on the timing of the water flow.

UNESCO: 83e